Birds of prey weren’t new to me. Driving through southern Utah,
I’d seen them from the car, sitting on fence posts that had been
put up to keep the cattle from wandering onto I-15 and that now
provided perches for Red-tailed Hawks. On the way home from Capital
Reef one winter, I saw five Bald Eagles, standing as tall as fence
posts by the side of the road. On the ground, they were
undignified, tearing at a roadkilled deer. But when, in my review
mirror, the head of one eagle turned nearly all the way around to
make sure I was on my way, its white head eclipsing the thin,
exhaust-dirty snow, the eagle made it clear that I had interrupted
them. On the side of the road tugging meat was where the eagles
were supposed to be. I was the one out of place.

I wonder if this is how the world ends, climate change revealing
origins, transplants, hybrids. The end-of-the-world spoiler: we are
not as original as we thought we were.

Compared to southern Utah, western Michigan seemed like the last
place you’d see birds of prey. Once, my husband Erik, my daughter
Zoë, and I tried to go camping. We drove and drove until we found a
campground far from the city. As we unpacked the car and began to
set up the tent, I saw a basketball hoop. The campground was next
to a neighborhood.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make Grand Rapids feel
like home. Grand Rapids was not Salt Lake, where I had lived for
most of my life. I’d left for college, stayed in Portland for a few
years, went back to Salt Lake for grad school. Now in Grand Rapids,
having moved for a job, I wanted to go home. In time I would get
used to this place, I knew, in the same way one gets used to
oneself: You learn to like the way your hair parts on the left, the
way your left eye is smaller than your right, the way you bite your
pinky fingernail just like your mother. You learn to adapt to the
place you live. But as the climate changes, as even your native
land changes—butterflies in November!—I wonder how you’re supposed
to get used to that.

But I also felt as though I should stay away from Salt Lake.
That place has a way of domesticating even the most wild child, and
Zoë, my three-year-old, though stubborn with her love of square
food and her rabbit-like dialect, wasn’t particularly wild. She
liked her face and her hands clean, her hair brushed. She folded
cloth napkins straight from the dryer. She suggested that we get
out the iron before company comes, like my mom did. I wanted her,
even if it was a pain in my ass, to be more stubborn,
less acquiescent. Fierce. If we went back to Salt Lake, I was
afraid my daughter would follow my path—would fall for boys who
said they liked the way she laughed at their unfunny jokes, the way
she asked which direction to turn, right or left, although she knew
full well already, the way she put her pinky finger in her mouth.
Just like I do. Just like my mom does.

Grand Rapids, April 5th. And this was the first time
Zoë and I, except for one freakishly warm week in January, had seen
the sun. There was only residual snow on the ground. We could
finally see grass. We looked for early flowers over at Aquinas
College across the street from our house. The college’s budget was
hemorrhaging but the hemorrhage had become beautiful. The unfunding
let these typically manicured lawns and flower beds turn back to
wild.

On the campus, we found purple-striped crocuses. Zoë wanted to
collect all this newness. She said, let’s pick the flowers. I told
her, no, the flower lasts longer in the ground than in your hand.
Not much longer, but longer. I distracted her with a stick that had
fallen from...

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